good girls don't tell lies
by gungnirburst
Summary: A tiny prick would be enough to make Viola bleed. [Ellen/Viola. Vampire!Ellen.]


I thought of Ellen as older for this, but it's not necessary.

**Notes**: femslash, blood drinking, vampire!Ellen.

* * *

Viola goes out the front door at dusk. She left a note on the kitchen table for Father - just in case, because he worries so if she's out after dark. She hopes, in the back of her mind, that she will not be gone long enough to tickle his ire this time.

The forest trail under her booted feet is familiar even in near darkness. Thickets outline the path, spinkled with thorny rose bushes and small yellow flowers the exact shade of her hair. Breathing in the air made earthy by foliage helps Viola relax, and she runs the rest of the way down, twin braids bouncing on her back and shoulders. She runs all the way to the house in the clearing and continues through the door and past the rooms and up the stairs with the same quick, rhythmic steps, one foot in front of the other over and over again. Her breathing has picked up and her cheeks are pink by the time she reaches the door.

Without hesitation - she's done this so many times already - Viola swings the door open.

In the bed bundled up in cotton sheets and fluffy pillows and one teddy bear, surrounded by the smell of candlewax and old books, is her friend, still sleeping. She does not stir an inch with Viola's arrival, but that's to be excepted. For the moment, Viola does what she's supposed to and sits in the chair by the bed, tucking her dress under her bottom.

She plucks the bear out from the chokehold it's in and waits.

.:.

Countless minutes pass before Ellen finally shows signs of life: a twitch in her fingers and the slight rising of her chest. Her eyelashes, long and light, flutter off her cheeks, and eyes red like teacups full of blood stare up at the ceiling.

Outside, the sun is gone.

Viola sits absolutely still as Ellen slowly sits up and stretches out with patience. This part is always the most curious: watching the dead come back should be scary, but it just fills Viola with awe. Ellen's body is bloodless and pale, and her arms and legs don't move fluidly like they should. They seem rigid in a way, like she has doll joints that only go in predetermined directions. Ellen explained it once; the dead are not supposed to move so her body will always be stiff and uncooperative, even with the stretches.

_That's how books lie to you_, she had said. _They feed you some truth so you'll believe them, but they're full of lies_.

Ellen still keeps all her books regardless.

Sleepy eyes slide over to Viola at last, and her breath catches and stills in her lungs. Ellen smiles, her perfectly white razor teeth glinting in the candlelight. Every single one of them is sharp like the knives Father uses to skin and gut deer and are just as pointy. A tiny prick would be enough to make Viola bleed.

Ellen pats down on the bed next to her hip. "Come here," she says softly. Viola is swift to follow direction, moving to sit with Ellen hip-to-hip, the bear tucked in her arms. Ellen's hands are colder than winter and chill Viola to her very bone marrow as they touch her cheeks. Ellen's smile grows.

"I missed you," Ellen says, sweet like honeysuckle. Her teeth are on full display for Viola to fixate upon with her eyes, and in the memory of her mind and flesh she recalls the very feel and shape of them. It's been a while. "Did you miss me?" Ellen asks. A thin finger strokes under Viola's right eye, making her shudder from the top of her spine all the way down her back.

Viola clears her throat and swallows thickly. "Yeah," she replies, raspy and a little strained. Her pulse thuds wildly in her throat, anticipatory and adrenalized. Ellen can definitely hear it because her eyes become more focused on Viola's neck instead of her face.

"I've been without you for three days," Ellen laments, "and I'm terribly hungry."

"I know," Viola says. The teddy bear - dead like its owner - is strangled in the clutch of her arms. "I'm sorry."

Ellen hums behind her lips, and her fingers turn into sneaky caterpillars that crawl down Viola's neck and circle around the column at the base. "Don't apologize. I would never eat if it wasn't for you," Ellen says. "I would have wasted away alone without you."

A fast reel of memory: a girl with sunken cheeks and hollow eyes, bony fingers and a body barely able to move; a girl so ravenous she almost drank Viola dry.

"I'm not gonna let you be alone anymore," Viola promises, hyperaware of the rings of ice touching her skin.

In her still beating heart, she knows she's gone too far, given away too much to leave Ellen now.

"I know," Ellen replies, her eyes lifting up to Viola's face. They close as Ellen leans in and kisses her cheek with dry, pale lips. Viola thinks this is what death might feel like for some, cold but comforting, and she also wonders what death was like for Ellen.

Ellen, who was killed by a blood-sucker in her sleep.

The fingers around her neck loosen their frosty noose, flittering down to her arm and grasping her wrist delicately like Viola is the one with stiff joints that need to be handled with care. The removal of Ellen's lips comes with a hard jump in Viola's pulse where it pounds in her wrists as well as her throat. She watches her wrist get lifted into the air by Ellen's hands, and it is as if she's not in her own body, looking on at what is happening on the outside like a lost spirit. Another kiss is pressed to the webbing of veins in her palm, Ellen's lips sliding down to the line where her hand and wrist meet.

Viola breathes at a slightly quickened pace, bracing herself for the bite just as Ellen's mouth parts for her teeth. Two sets of tiny knives stretch over the notch of bone, the needle points grazing Viola's skin and birthing goosebumps in their wake.

Ellen bites down.

Pain shoots through Viola's whole hand and her arm jerks in reflex, fingers limp and shaky, but she stays as still as she can. The teeth soon pull out of the shallow holes they've made in her flesh then Ellen's open mouth covers them before the blood can spill too far. Suction and the slow drag of her tongue leads the blood down her throat while whatever she can't catch is smeared around.

Ellen bites twice more before she's finished, her lips shiny and eyes glowing dark and color thick, staring straight through Viola as if she's a window. There's blood all around her mouth and streaked on her cheeks, those razor teeth slimy with what keeps Viola alive.

"Are you sure that's enough?" Viola asks, trembling all over. Her wrist pulsates and stings where the multiple bites have left their puncture marks; but she's not feeling the least bit lightheaded and it's concerning because Ellen usually drinks to her fill.

Wet lips touch her own, and Viola tastes her blood.

"It's enough."

The teddy bear lays on the floor forgotten.

.:.

When she returns home an hour after the sun had set and gave rise to the moon, Father meets Viola at the door in a rush.

"Viola, where have you been?" he asks hurriedly. His brow is tense, meaning it was recently furrowed with worry.

Holding her bandaged wrist behind her back, Viola answers simply and with a smile, "I just went to see a friend." Her fingers tighten, pressing into the bites, and her smile goes wide. "That's all."


End file.
